It's a nice story, but it's hard to extrapolate from just one anecdote.
First of all, she undoubtedly became more experienced at her job as she got older. She does claim that she kept looking for work as both names, but we know that there's a huge element of randomness to internet success. Often the same exact article gets posted to reddit several times before one of them takes off, for instance. Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_cascade
There are plenty of examples of successful female bloggers, so I'm not sure that her personal example really means anything. This really requires experimental data.
tl:dr The success of James could easily be attributed to an increase in experience and completely random elements.
The data comes from a source that needs to be double-blind but wasn't.
What would be interesting would be to do have one party write two separate emails talking about a different subject. Then randomly switch the name/gender of one of the emails.
Then have a second party "grade" the emails. With the "author's name" clearly marked on the email.
First of all, she undoubtedly became more experienced at her job as she got older. She does claim that she kept looking for work as both names, but we know that there's a huge element of randomness to internet success. Often the same exact article gets posted to reddit several times before one of them takes off, for instance. Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_cascade
There are plenty of examples of successful female bloggers, so I'm not sure that her personal example really means anything. This really requires experimental data.
tl:dr The success of James could easily be attributed to an increase in experience and completely random elements.